->''"It could be the most terrifying motion picture I have ever made!"''-->-- '''Creator/AlfredHitchcock''', {{tagline}}

''The Birds'' is a 1963 suspense/horror film directed by Creator/AlfredHitchcock, [[AdaptationExpansion based on the short story of the same name]] by Daphne du Maurier. The film's innovative special effects, soundtrack, and apocalyptic theme influenced later "revenge of nature" disaster films.

Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) is a young UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco socialite. She decides to follow lawyer Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) to his home in Bodega Bay, California. She apparently picks the wrong time to visit. The birds of Bodega Bay are becoming increasingly aggressive and soon every human being around comes under attack, with Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette), a close friend of the Brenners, becoming one of the early casualties.

Unlike most other films of its era, ''The Birds'' does not have a music score or an ending in the conventional sense. The soundtrack was supervised by BernardHerrmann; bird cries and wingflaps were played on an expanded Trautonium (called the Mixtur Trautonium) by Oskar Sala, assisted by German composer Remi Gassmann.

The screenplay was written by Creator/EvanHunter. UbIwerks helped out with the special effects involving the birds. There was a [[MadeForTVMovie made-for-TV]] sequel, ''The Birds II: Land's End'' (1994), with a new cast of characters (and Ms. Hedren gamely contributing a cameo as a shopkeeper.) [[AlanSmithee It fared poorly.]]

----!! This Movie Contains Examples Of:

* AdultFear: The whole scene with the birds attacking the school. An InUniverse trope, as one woman overhears Melanie explaining about what happened to the school while eating with her children and [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere immediately tries to hitch a ride with another diner patron out of town]].* {{After Action Patchup}}: Mitch treating Melanie's head wound in the diner. This scene depicts the beginning of a friendlier relationship between the two of them.* AlanSmithee: ''The Birds II'' was credited to him.* AuthorAppeal: Bird motif (this more explicit than other films) and an icy blonde lead actress.* AttackOfTheKillerWhatever: In this case, birds.* TheBadGuyWins: The infamous ending, which indicates that the birds have succeeded in taking over the town, [[spoiler:and quite possibly the entire country]]. * BalloonBurstingBird: The film involves said avians attacking a little girl's birthday party. During the assault, the birds pop a number of balloons.* BatScare: While the evil avians are a recurrent threat, their final attack, as Melanie enters a room and finds it's filled with them, must fit.* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: Averted and played straight. Melanie's hair does (eventually) get disheveled, and she gets some nasty head wounds towards the end. But for all the running and falling down, her clothes are always perfectly clean and free of wrinkles.* BigBad: The birds themselves. Interestingly, they don't quite cause the conflict so much as they ''are'' the conflict itself; their attacks kickstart and drive the plot, and they are not as much characters as they are a full-scale living doomsday scenario.* BigNo: Well, how would you react if you were attacked by birds in a small room, sending you into a catatonic state, and then your friends tried to guide you outside into a landscape of staring birds to get to the car? Naturally Melanie flat-out refuses, at first.* BittersweetEnding: See NoEnding below for the details. However, Lydia and Melanie share a tender moment in one of the last shots, implying that the old woman has come to care for her - and that the trauma may have actually bonded them.* BreakTheHaughty: Mrs Bundy the ornithologist is a pompous AgentScully who refuses to believe that the birds are attacking. The last we see of her is after the chaos in the town - and she's visibly stunned into silence.* BrokenBird: Pun aside [[spoiler: Melanie is reduced to a catatonic wreck after getting attacked by birds in the attic]]. It was a similar [[CreatorBreakdown situation for her actress]] in real life too.* CassandraDidIt: Melanie is the one who argued against the ornithologist who said birds lack the ability to flock together and attack, and immediately after an attack is blamed because the attacks started after she arrived.* CassandraTruth: It takes a very long time for the main characters convince the law enforcement that birds are attacking, them chalking it up to coincidence. Not until the largest attack on the town occurs do they start investigating.* CerebusCallBack: As everyone plans to flee the house, Cathy begs to bring the love birds Melanie got her as a present - reminding everyone of the reason Melanie ended up in Bodega Bay in the first place.* CreepyCrows: A fair segment of nature's battalion here, and [[MascotMook are strongly associated with this movie.]]* DaylightHorror: Most of the bird attacks happen during the day.* DevelopingDoomedCharacters: The movie opens with a romantic-flirtation plot.* DisproportionateRetribution: One of Mitch's clients shot his wife in the head ''six times''. ''For changing the channel when he was watching a ball game''. * EyeScream / StaggeredZoom: A brief shot of one of the victims, with his eyes pecked out.* FeatheredFiend: Type B. This movie could be seen as the TropeCodifier.* FiveSecondForeshadowing: Melanie sees a sparrow in the Brenners' fireplace just before dozens of them come pouring into the room through the chimney.* {{Foreshadowing}}: There's plenty of actual foreshadowing in the first half of the movie - Melanie taking time to notice a swarm of seagulls in San Francisco, and attention to lots of birds sitting on telephone poles.* FowlMouthedParrot: The reason Melanie orders the mynah bird at the beginning of the film. She planned on teaching the bird a few of the "semantics" she picked up in a college class at Berkley before giving the mynah to her uptight Aunt Tessa.* GrudgingThankYou: Lydia thanks Melanie in this way for taking care of her after a nervous breakdown.* HalfwayPlotSwitch: It starts off feeling like a romantic comedy, and takes its time getting to the real point.* HarmfulToMinors: The school scene, among others.* HeroicBSOD: Melanie enters a catatonic state after [[spoiler: the final attack in the attic]].* HotTeacher: Annie, who was once a lover of Mitch's. * InNameOnly: Well, ''technically'' it's based on the du Maurier short story. The screenwriter actually had read the short story, but Hitchcock specifically told him not to bother with it, as all he wanted to use was the title and the core premise of birds attacking people. [[DisownedAdaptation Needless to say, the author Daphne Du Maurier was not pleased with this.]]* InfantImmortality: Played with. The birds attack a group of children twice in the film, but all of them survive. There's mention of one needing to be taken to hospital, but ending up fine.* IronicNurseryTune: Sung by the schoolchildren as crows gather on the jungle gym.* ItsQuietTooQuiet: There is no music at all in the soundtrack, not counting the singing children.* KillAllHumans: Seems to be the birds' goal.* MalignantPlotTumor: Romance happens. Then lots and lots and ''lots'' of angry birds happen.* MamaBear: Lydia, to Mitch.* MeaningfulBackgroundEvent: The birds silently gathering on the playground equipment behind Melanie.* MissingMom: Melanie's mother has been gone for years. She's implied to be a DaddysGirl as a result.* MommasBoy / MyBelovedSmother: Mitch and Lydia.* NoEnding: ** [[spoiler:The birds enter their resting phase and allow the characters to leave the besieged house. You never find why they started, or if they'll start attacking again.]]** An expanded ending was in the planning stages, with two additional scenes that were never filmed, but it was just as open to interpretation. [[spoiler:After a drive through the town, which is now in ruins and has bodies of the unlucky locals lying in its streets, the characters head down to San Francisco...where they find the Golden Gate Bridge completely covered in birds, silently watching them]].** The book explains that [[spoiler:the attack patterns are somehow connected to the tides, meaning that there are guaranteed breaks when one can go outside to get food and rebuild defenses. The birds of prey do join in, but the narrator makes plans to attach barbed wire to the windows and chimney to keep them from getting in.]] Strangely, despite the overall situation seeming to be much more grave in the book than in the adaptation ([[spoiler:Nat and his family are possibly the only survivors '''in whole Europe''', if not the whole planet, and the military intervention suggested in the movie is shown to fail miserably in the book]]) and basically the same type of NoEnding, the novella still manages to give a more optimistic taste than the movie does. * NoodleIncident: Melanie's mischievous character is established by reference to a prank she pulled that resulted in the shattering of a plate-glass window. Though she supposedly had to appear in court because of it, the nature of the prank is never explained.* NothingIsScarier: A classic example. the movie never once establishes ''why'' the birds are attacking. This only serves to make it prime ParanoiaFuel; imagine, one day ''every single flighted bird in the world'' goes on what can only be described as a homicidal rampage and ''nobody knows why''.* OhCrap: Melanie's face after seeing a massive flock of birds gathered next to the school.* PhoneBooth: Hiding inside one during an attack saves Melanie's life.* PrettyInMink: Melanie dons a fur coat for much of the film.* RealityHasNoSoundtrack: Uses diegetic sounds and electronic bird noises in place of a musical score.* SceneryPorn: Hitchcock and cinematographer Robert Burks make good use of the photogenic [=NoCal=] coastline.* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: A mother dining in the cafe with her two children overhears Melanie explain about what happened at the school and tries to hitch a ride with another diner patron. Unfortunately for her, the birds attack again and her would be driver picks a really bad time to light a cigar.* StupidScientist: At one point the main characters meet Mrs Bundy, an ornithologist, who denies that the birds of various species are going out of their way to attack humans. She is seen with the other diner patrons after the first truly large-scale attack. She doesn't say anything, instead simply huddling against a wall and glancing over her shoulder. It's pretty obvious that she's realized how wrong she was.* TooDumbToLive:** Why does Melanie enter a room filled with angry birds? Because Hitchcock says so. His specific response when Tippi Hedren questioned her motivation was, "Your salary." Earlier in the film, when the town is being attacked, she inexplicably wanders out of the safety of the cafe and gets trapped in a phone booth.** May also apply to the guy from the bar in the gray hat and suit who was ranting about how nasty birds were before going out to lead the lady with her kids out of the town, who lights his cigar over spilled gas which he somehow didn't notice as a result of the attacking birds. Given that he was also kind of a jerk he may also count as an AssholeVictim.** None of the characters takes even basic precautions against getting pecked bloody, such as wearing gloves or wrapping their arms with cloth.* UnbuiltTrope: It's truly amazing how similar some moments in this movie are to a [[ZombieApocalypse zombie horror film.]] With the masses of weak but overwhelming killers, the shock at the outlandish idea that such creatures could ever attack, barricading houses and hysterical survivors, you could easily see this as Hitchcock putting his own stamp on the conventions... but zombie movies wouldn't come about [[Film/NightOfTheLivingDead1968 for another five years.]]* TheUnreveal: We never do learn exactly what is causing the birds to attack.* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Melanie gets a pet for her aunt that she is implied to pick up before she buys Cathy the love birds. She says later that she was going to teach it to talk before giving it to her aunt, implying it's back in her apartment in San Francisco. She had only planned to stay in Bodega Bay a couple of hours, which means the pet went the whole weekend without food (unless Melanie phoned a friend to look in on it). FridgeHorror if that one went ballistic like the other birds too.* WolfWhistle: In the opening scene Melanie gets one of these from a little kid, to whom she turns and smiles. This was apparently an ActorAllusion to a diet soda commercial Tippi Hedren had appeared in, which Hitchcock had seen.* WouldHurtAChild: The first two mass birds attack happen to groups of children.* ZergRush: Once the birds get wound up in large numbers, this becomes their favorite tactic.